It is a modern Christmas conundrum: you receive a gift card from a well-meaning relative, but instead of spending it you let it linger in a long-forgotten drawer until it passes its expiry date.
Well, help is at hand. After years of operating in the US, online marketplaces have arrived in the UK, allowing users to buy and sell unwanted gift cards at discounted rates.
Zeek, a website and mobile app, is the largest gift card marketplace in Europe. You can get it from the Apple store and Google Play and it gives you access to hundreds of potential buyers for your card — 90 per cent of the offers posted are sold within the first 24 hours.
It is simple to use, working in a similar way to eBay and other online marketplaces: you set up an account, take a picture of your gift card and, once it is verified, it is listed. You then wait until it is sold before posting it to Zeek, which will send it on to the buyer. If your gift card is digital then you input your code rather than take a picture.
There are some caveats. The value of the voucher must be more than £10 and less than £500 and it must be from a company that has at least five branches in your country, which means your local boutique stores will not apply.
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Digital vouchers also have to be valid for at least one month from the time they are uploaded; for physical vouchers, it is three months.
Zeek takes a 7 per cent commission and you have to sell at a minimum discount of 10 per cent. This means if you have a £30 gift card and sell it for £27 you will be left with £25.11. Bulk sellers can ring Zeek to negotiate smaller discounts
You can also sell your cards on eBay and cash4vouchers.com.